Inside of a Dog, It's Too Dark to Read

[wakes up slowly until a dog steps on her] Augh. [creaks] Oh, thank you for leaving me that to clean up, puppies.

Anyway, I have been duly chided for not having updated in Forever, although trying to get something written for yesterday seemed somewhat... self-defeating somehow. I have, however, managed to miss everything involved with March 1 (in my defence there, my internet WAS out for a week around then until I got a good tech to come to the house), Herself's birthday, St. Patrick's day, Rozberk's birthday, the Equinox and Goddess knows what-all's been on my Flist.

[hangs head]

I'm sorry.

May I offer, to start, ( this interesting essay from J-List (mostly the first and last paras, although the chimp proves that it's not just celebrities and the rich who're doing this:) )

Let's see... ah! ( OMG MARTIANS! )

Through complex and torturous means (it's a good thing I'm still kinda stuck on eating Japanese rice and edamame, although the dogs don't eat cheap), I have a second computer, a desktop whose name is '17 Tauri' but is called 'Electra' (spelling optional). Because of Elektra, I can bring you a couple pictures from my 'adventures' in Second Life' which are much, much nicer than before:

( Pictures behind the cut, alt-tagged without being reminded *grin*! )

Dogs: Everybody's OK and doing much better with the housebreaking stuff and the chewing stuff, for the most part. Annie managed to wriggle out of her harness; I refused to chase her, so eventually she got bored or anxious enough to come home on her own. Gemma has found a new way out of the yard, said portal not having been located yet (obviously). If it weren't for cars and utter gits, I wouldn't worry so much about them being out. Sirius is still in his denatured Azkaban until he realises he is NOT in charge of domestic security issues - he decided Sesame needed beating on, and I was pre-tired of cleaning up dogblood, so Cait's been coaching me on this problem I've never had to deal with previously. Meissa's platelets are finally back up to normal range, so cross your fingers, and hope she's finally spayed at the end of the month. D'Argo is itchy. Would you believe just about everybody's grown up already? Sirius is the only one still under two years for sure, as I'm still really vague on Sesame's age.

Still looking for a job. I am bad at this, by which I mean I look at the listings and NOTHING seems to fit, so then I get depressed and everything grinds to a halt.

But my LAST CAR PAYMENT is on the verge of getting mailed, so that's one less worry!

And with that, I think that's enough babble for now.

I've seen some similar thoughts come up in my Flist before - not often, mind you, but at least once - and I thought you might find it interesting.

( 'Swearing up a Blue streak': from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, reprinted in the Miami Herald )

Some questions:

( Oh, but you've got to read the article first. )

There ya go. Have at. I'm curious to see what you think.

The word for 'tuxedo' (as in 'black tie formal wear') in French, despite their loathing of loanwords and its completely unchanged spelling, is le or la 'smoking'.

Yes, 'smoking'. Just like in English.

They must have got it from the tuxedo's origins, a modification of the smoking jacket beloved of Victorian imagery, and named in the States after the district in New York where it was introduced to high society. It retains some of the styling of the smoking jacket still, in that notched lapels are Simply Not Done, for one. However, the French (being the French) have taken 'le smoking' one further to 'la smoking', by Yves Saint Laurent. A recently staged retrospective of Saint Laurent's tuxedo-based designs for women is iconised by Catherine Deneuve dressed in 'a smoking' and characterised by the elegant statement, 'The rapport de force between women and the masculine establishment was played out over the years like a game of chess,' explains Christophe Martin, the exhibition’s scenographer. 'Yves Saint Laurent transformed woman into a queen who, in her "smoking", dares to check the king.'

Now, the reason I found this all out was, believe it or not, Sailormoon. wickedtrue was able to send me the translated manga to read, and despite all the bits and pieces, fansites and essays I've read here and there, reading the whole thing in a piece was interesting. The one male regular character, Mamoru (Tuxedo Kamen/Mask), also has planet-guardian powers of a sort, but they are much more defensive and passive than those of the senshi, the 'pretty soldiers'. He has psychometry on a large scale - he can see things elsewhere as long as he puts a hand on the earth; he can Heal Light (how did you guess I used to play D&D?); and when he combines his strength with Sailormoon's, they become more powerful together than the sum of their parts. In fact, he's the essential element to more than one of her 'upgrades', despite his occasional protests of ineffectualness.

At one point, Tuxedo Kamen is desperate to join in a fight against their enemies and is coached by a benevolent internal voice to concentrate his energy in his hands and cast it from himself. His kiai for this becomes 'Tuxedo La Smoking Bomber!' Perplexed by this odd phrase, I, of course, Googled - and found a comment which mentioned it was a pun on the French word for tuxedo. Soooo... drop the other one - what French word for tuxedo? Back to Google, and hence to Yves and his 'smoking's.

The feminine article in the kiai is even somewhat appropriate, considering the female-centric series as a whole. And once the pun drops into place (wow, a Japanese pun using English and a French loanword - complex!), you see that his shout fits in with the pattern of the senshi attack phrases. (Another fan points out that a bomber is also a kind of jacket, although whether that part's still punny we'd have to ask Naoko-sensei.)

So now I know. And I learned some French, too.

I was just told that 'versioning' is a 'widely-known' gerund.

Because, you know, saying 'revision tracking' is so bloody hard.